Pedro hooked me up well here. I’m writing from his family’s vacation home in Quila Quina, near San Martin de Los Andes. It is a tiny town with only about twenty year round residents. Many are Mapuche with their land protected due to it being in Lanin National Park. The area is perfect for short walks and swims in chilly, but refreshing, 600m deep Lago Lacar. Continue reading Quila Quina→

While I was traveling along the Caretera Austral I met Dr. Arturo, a Cohaique based physician, who jotted down notes in my journal on things to do along the way. I found them as informative as any guide book and thought I would share them. Continue reading Caretera Austral Travel Tips→

Expedition 2012: Patagonia, Land of Extremes Patagonia is the place of legends: the towering, iconic mountains, raging rivers, deep blue glaciers, wild winds, and miles of open, expansive wilderness. There’s a reason the company Patagonia took its name from this corner of the earth. A trip to Patagonia is a dream for most climbers and trekkers, as it was for me. So when the opportunity to go climbing with a couple of friends came up, I jumped on it.

Navigating thousand meter high granite walled channels barely wider than the yacht; five meter swells, waves crashing over the cabin, crossing the Golfo de Penas; rounding the notorious Cabo Raper in dense fog and rain by radar; to days of gentle winds, gazing at glaciated volcanoes. Continue reading Sailing Patagonia→

El Chalten is a tough place to leave. It is an easy to settle into, close knit, climber community, in a spectacular mountain scene; and it is also surrounded by ice sheet to the west and desert to the east. There is always a day bus to a flight out of Calafate, or one of the monotonous long distance sorts that take you through the night up barren Ruta 40, the highway travelers pride themselves in completing for the sake of completing and little other sightseeing reason. I chose to let the views guide me. Continue reading Candelaria Mancilla, Raw Patagonia→

The guidebook says “Coleta Tortel is one of those places that simply has to be seen to be believed”. And, it certainly is surreal. The town didn’t have a road to it until 2003 and is built on the slopes of a steep fjord. There are no roads within town, only cedar walkways, miles of them. See the Photo Archive.

This trip ran from June 16, 2003, to September 25, 2003, and mostly took place in Southern Africa. There was a good chunk of the time that I wasn’t in the mood to do a whole lot of writing, so I decided to limit the typed up version to the end of the trip – that was the most interesting section anyways. Continue reading Africa Journal→

Time really does fly. It is strange thinking that I am already ten weeks into my Africa trip and well past that point where the day of week becomes meaningless. This is especially true in this cabin high up in the Mt. Mulange range of Southern Malawi where I started thinking about this update. It was a three day hike through some rugged mountains to get here. For the first two nights I had the company of some French, American and Canadian travelers, but tonight I’ve got this 19th century British built cabin all to myself; no excuses for putting off writing now. Continue reading A postcard from Africa→

I finally came across a relatively fast internet in China and since it’s been raining continuously for the past week I decided to spend a little time at the computer. I don’t feel quite up to typing the whole thing, it’s getting long, but here’s some of the logistics. This should help with identifying some of the pictures you come across on the web site or just let some of you know what I’ve been up to for the last year or so. Continue reading Asia Journal→

I figured I am a bit overdue for an e-mail to some of those people I’ve met along the way and some good friends I’ve neglected for a while. So this is to let you know I’m almost back to the real world, a month or so away anyways, and to thank you for all the good times along the way. It’s been about 17 months now since I left the States for work in Japan. Last February, when I traded in the laptop for the backpack, my travels brought me overland from Singapore through Tibet to India with a side trip in the middle to Australia and New Zealand – all with the idea that it isn’t so much the destination but the getting there that traveling is all about. Continue reading A year and a half in Asia→

‘Quien se apura en la Patagonia pierde el tiempo,’ locals say (‘Those who hurry in Patagonia lose time’). We’ll likely be here another week, waiting for the high system to move in and shift our winds around from the South.

These three days are worthy of a full blog post (coming soon): trekking out to Glaciar O’Higgins, staying on a ranch where I was told only twenty a year pass through, in a natural landscape that was right up there with any I’ve seen. Inspiring to experience the traditional subsistence ranching the father and son carry on. The true Patagonia.

If you are going to cross a border, you might as well make it interesting. Argentina / Chile, no phone or computer, only a paper record of who comes and goes. Carried the way too heavy pack for five hours through forest and pass from Lago Desierto to the two home “town” of Candelaria Mancilla.

Alpine climbing Huntington Ravine, Mount Washington, NH. The footage is actually from three different days in Jan-Feb 2012. The climbs include Pinnacle Gully, Damnation Gully and the top-out is from South Gully. Winds on Pinnacle and Damnation were high those two subsequent days in February, upwards of 90 MPH, but conditions throughout most of the climbs were picture perfect, calm and sunny!